Zero-tolerance policies: When are they right for your business?
✍ Scribed by David Lindsay; Courtney Brevelle
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2006
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 95 KB
- Volume
- 33
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0745-7790
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) made headlines in 1983 when a part-time letter carrier in Edmonton, Oklahoma, shot and killed 14 coworkers. In response to this and later post-office incidents that claimed the lives of 15 other employees, the USPS adopted a comprehensive "Workplace Violence Zero Tolerance" program. Likewise, in 1998, a major car manufacturer issued a statement that the company had "zero tolerance" for sex discrimination and harassment, having just settled a class-action sexual-harassment lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of the manufacturer's female workers for $34 million, a record at the time.
These examples illustrate a growing trend toward the use of zero-tolerance policies in the workplace. These policies have emerged in recent years as employers have struggled with how to communicate clearly to their employees that when it comes to certain types of misconduct, they mean business. For example, many employers profess that they have zero tolerance for drug use, employee theft, workplace violence, and unlawful discrimination and harassment.
Though these policies sound good and, in some cases, may have significant business and legal advantages, employers who apply zero-tolerance policies to every imaginable workplace malady dilute those policies' efficacy. This article examines both the virtues and the dangers of zero-tolerance policies and provides tips on how best to use a zero-tolerance policy without running afoul of applicable state and federal laws or common sense.
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